“Is the general indisposed?” asked the baron.
“He is afflicted with a nervous movement,” replied Raphael, in an under-tone.
“What a misfortune!” cried the baron. “It is tic-douloureux. Whence this evil? Some tendon injured in the wars, perhaps, dear Raphael?”
“No; a strong moral impression—”
“It must be very terrible. And what was the cause?”
“A word of your king Louis XIV.”
“What word?” asked the alarmed baron.
“The celebrated word: ‘There is no longer the Pyrenees.’ ”
They talked much of the new singer at all the reunions; but they were ignorant, above all, of a significant fact which passed with her on the same evening. Pepe Vera had not ceased to follow Marisalada. In his quality of a favorite with the public, it was not difficult for him to cross the threshold of the temple consecrated to the muses, despite the animosity they had sworn to the bull-fights. Maria left the stage amid a torrent of applause, when she met Pepe Vera and some other young men face to face.
“How blessed is she!” said the celebrated bull-fighter, spreading his mantle as a carpet for the artiste; “how blessed is this voice, capable to make all the nightingales of May to die with envy!”